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BY 

LOUISE de la RAMEE 

ti 



WITH TWENTY-TWO FULL-PAGE 
ILLUSTRATIONS BY , 

LUDWIG AND REGINA 


BECKLEY-CARDY COMPANY 

CHICAGO 

c. 



1>ZlO 

.3 


.D375- 

Ho 

as 


Copyright, 1930, by 

BECKLEY-CARDY COMPANY 


All Rights Reserved 






Printe 



'nited States of America 


©CIA 33918 




A DOG OF FLANDERS 


I 

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone 
in the world. 

They were friends in a friendship closer 
than brotherhood. Nello was a little Ar- 
dennois, Patrasche was a big Fleming. 
They were both of the same age by length 
of years, yet one was still young and the 
other was already old. They had dwelt 
together almost all their days; both were 
orphaned and destitute and owed their 
lives to the same hand. It had been the 
beginning of the tie between them, their 
first bond of sympathy; and it had 
strengthened day by day and had grown 
with their growth, firm and indissoluble, 
until they loved one another very greatly. 

Their home was a little hut on the edge 
5 


6 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


of a little village—a Flemish village a 
league from Antwerp, set amidst flat 
breadths of pasture and corn lands, with 
long lines of poplars and of alders 'bend¬ 
ing in the breeze on the edge of the great 
canal which ran through it. It had about 
a score of houses and homesteads, with 
shutters of bright green or sky-blue, and 
roofs rose-red or black and white, and 
walls whitewashed until they shone in the 
sun like snow. In the center of the village 
stood a windmill, placed on a little moss- 
grown slope; it was a landmark to all the 
level country round. It had once been 
painted scarlet, sails and all, but that had 
been in its infancy, half a century or more 
earlier, when it had ground wheat for the 
soldiers of Napoleon; and it was now a 
ruddy brown, tanned by wind and weather. 
It went queerly by fits and starts, as 
though rheumatic and stiff in the joints 
from age, but it served the whole neigh- 



Their home was a little hut on the edge of a village 






















8 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


borhood, which would have thought it al¬ 
most as impious to carry grain elsewhere 
as to attend any other religious service 
than the mass that was performed at the 
altar of the little old gray church, with its 
conical steeple, which stood opposite to it 
and whose single bell rang morning, noon, 
and night, with that strange, subdued, hol¬ 
low sadness which every bell that hangs 
in the Low Countries seems to gain as an 
integral part of its melody. 

Within sound of the little melancholy 
clock, almost from their birth upward, they 
had dwelt together, Nello and Patrasche, 
in the little hut on the edge of the village, 
with the cathedral spire of Antwerp rising 
in the northeast, beyond the great green 
plain of seeding grass and spreading corn 
that stretched away from them like a tide¬ 
less, changeless sea. It was the hut of a 
very old man, of a very poor man—of 
old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 9 

a soldier, and who remembered the wars 
that had trampled the country as oxen 
tread down the furrows, and who had 
brought from his service nothing except a 
wound which had made him a cripple. 

When old Jehan Daas had reached his 
full eighty, his daughter had died in the 
Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left 
him in legacy her two-year-old son. The 
old man could ill contrive to support him¬ 
self, but he took up the additional burden 
uncomplainingly, and it soon became wel¬ 
come and precious to him. Little Nello— 
which was but a pet diminutive for Nico¬ 
las—throve with him, and the old man 
and the little child lived in the poor little 
hut contentedly. 

It was a very humble little mud hut, 
indeed, but it was clean and white as a 
sea shell, and stood in a small plot of 
garden ground that yielded beans and 
herbs and pumpkins. They were very poor, 


10 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

terribly poor; many a day they had noth¬ 
ing at all to eat. They never by any 
chance had enough; to have had enough to 
eat would have been to have reached para¬ 
dise at once. But the old man was very 
gentle and good to the boy, and the boy 
was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, ten¬ 
der-hearted creature; and they were hap¬ 
py on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage, 
and asked no more of earth or heaven, 
save indeed that Patrasche should be al¬ 
ways with them, since, without Patrasche, 
where would they have been? 

For Patrasche was their alpha and 
omega; their treasury and granary; their 
store of gold and wand of wealth; their 
breadwinner and minister; their only 
friend and comforter. Patrasche dead or 
gone from them, they must have laid 
themselves down and died likewise. Pa¬ 
trasche was body, brains, hands, head, and 
feet to both of them: Patrasche was their 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 11 

very life, their very soul. For Jehan Daas 
was old and a cripple, and Nello was but 
a child; and Patrasche was their dog. 


II 


A DOG of Flanders—yellow of hide, 
large of head and limb, with wolflike ears 
that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet 
widened in the muscular development 
wrought in his breed by many generations 
of hard service. Patrasche came of a race 
which had toiled hard and cruelly from 
sire to son in Flanders many a century— 
slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts 
of the shafts and the harness, creatures 
that lived straining their sinews in the 
gall of the cart, and died breaking their 
hearts on the flints of the streets. 

Patrasche had been born of parents who 
had labored hard all their days over the 
sharp-set stones of the various cities and 
the long, shadowless, weary roads of the 
two Flanders and of Brabant. He had 
been born to no other heritage than that 
12 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 13 

of pain and of toil. He had been fed on 
curses and baptized with blows. Why 
not? It was a civilized country, and Pa- 
trasche was but a dog. Before he was 
fully grown he had known the bitter gall 
of the cart and the collar. Before he had 
entered his thirteenth month he had be¬ 
come the property of a hardware dealer, 
who was accustomed to wander over the 
land north and south, from the blue sea to 
the green mountains. His owners had sold 
him for a small price, because he was so 
young. 

The new master was a drunkard and a 
brute. The life of Patrasche was a life of 
hell. To deal the tortures of hell to the 
animal creation is a way which too many 
people have of showing their belief in it. 
His purchaser was a sullen, ill-living, 
brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart 
full with pots and pans and flagons and 
buckets, and other wares of crockery and 



He left Patrasche to draw the load as best he might 























A DOG OF FLANDERS 


15 


brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw 
the load as best he might, while he himself 
lounged idly by the side in fat and slug¬ 
gish ease, smoking his black pipe and 
stopping at every wineshop or cafe on 
the road. 

Happily for Patrasche—or unhappily 
—he was very strong; he came of an iron 
race, long born and bred to such cruel 
travail, so that he did not die, but man¬ 
aged to drag on a wretched existence 
under the brutal burdens, the scarifying 
lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, 
the curses, and the exhaustion which are 
the only wages with which the Flemings 
repay the most patient and laborious of 
all their four-footed victims. One day, 
after two years of this long and deadly 
agony, Patrasche was going on as usual 
along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely 
roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It 
was full midsummer, and very warm. His 


16 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

cart was heavily loaded, piled high with 
goods in metal and in earthenware. His 
owner sauntered on without noticing him 
otherwise than by the crack of the whip 
as it curled round his quivering loins. 
The Brabantois had paused to drink beer 
himself at every wayside house, but he 
had forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment 
for a draught from the canal. Going along 
thus, in the full sun, on a scorching high¬ 
way, having eaten nothing for twenty- 
four hours, and, which was far worse to 
him, not having tasted water for nearly 
twelve, being blind with dust, sore with 
blows, and stupefied with the merciless 
weight which dragged upon his loins, 
Patrasche, for once, staggered and foamed 
a little at the mouth, and fell. 

He fell in the middle of the white, 
dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; 
he was sick unto death, and motionless. 
His master gave him the only medicine in 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 17 

his pharmacy—kicks and oaths and blows 
with a cudgel of oak, which had been 
often the only food and drink, the only 
wage and reward, ever offered to him. But 
Patrasche was beyond the reach of any 
torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, 
dead to all appearances, in the white 
powder of the summer dust. After a 
while, finding it useless to assail his ribs 
with punishment and his ears with male¬ 
dictions, the Brabantois—deeming life 
gone in him, or going so nearly that his 
carcass was forever useless, unless, in¬ 
deed, some one should strip it of the skin 
for gloves—cursed him fiercely in fare¬ 
well, struck off the leather bands of the 
harness, kicked his body heavily aside into 
the grass, and, groaning and muttering in 
savage wrath, pushed the cart lazily along 
the road uphill, and left the dying dog 
there for the ants to sting and for the 
crows to pick. 


18 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

It was the last day before kermis away 
at Louvain, and the Brabantois was in 
haste to reach the fair and get a good 
place for his truck of brass wares. He was 
in fierce wrath, because Patrasche had 
been a strong and much-enduring animal, 
and because he himself had now the hard 
task of pushing his charette all the way to 
Louvain. But to stay to look after Pa¬ 
trasche never entered his thoughts; the 
beast was dying and useless, and he would 
steal, to replace him, the first large dog 
that he found wandering alone out of sight 
of its master. Patrasche had cost him 
nothing, or next to nothing, and for two 
long, cruel years he had made him toil 
ceaselessly in his service from sunrise to 
sunset, through summer and winter, in 
fair weather and foul. 

He had got a fair use and a good profit 
out of Patrasche: being human, he was 
wise, and left the dog to draw his last 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 19 

breath alone in the ditch, and have his 
bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might 
be by the birds, while he himself went on 
his way to beg and to steal, to eat and to 
drink, to dance and to sing, in the mirth 
at Louvain. A dying dog, a dog of the 
cart—why should he waste hours over its 
agonies at peril of losing a handful of cop¬ 
per coins, at peril of a shout of laughter? 

Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass- 
green ditch. It was a busy road that day, 
and hundreds of people, on foot and on 
mules, in wagons or in carts, went by, 
tramping quickly and joyously on to 
Louvain. Some saw him, most did not 
even look; all passed on. A dead dog 
more or less—it was nothing in Brabant; 
it would be nothing anywhere in the 
world. 


Ill 


After a time, among the holiday mak¬ 
ers, there came a little old man who was 
bent and lame and very feeble. He was 
in no guise for feasting; he was poorly and 
miserably clad, and he dragged his silent 
way slowly through the dust among the 
pleasure-seekers. He looked at Patrasche, 
paused, wondered, turned aside, then 
kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds 
of the ditch, and surveyed the dog with 
kindly eyes of pity. There was with him 
a little, rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child 
of a few years old, who pattered in amidst 
the bushes, that were for him breast high, 
and stood gazing with a pretty serious¬ 
ness upon the poor, great, quiet beast. 

Thus it was that these two first met— 
the little Nello and the big Patrasche. 

The upshot of that day was that old 
20 



He surveyed the dog with kindly eyes of pity 















22 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

Jehan Daas, with much laborious effort, 
drew the sufferer homeward to his own 
little hut, which was a stone’s throw off 
amidst the fields, and there tended him 
with so much care that the sickness, which 
had been a brain seizure, brought on by 
heat and thirst and exhaustion, with time 
and shade and rest passed away, and 
health and strength returned, and Pa- 
trasche staggered up again upon his four 
stout, tawny legs. 

Now, for many weeks, he had been use¬ 
less, powerless, sore, near to death; but 
all this time he had heard no rough word, 
had felt no harsh touch, but only the pity¬ 
ing murmurs of the little child’s voice and 
the soothing caress of the old man’s hand. 

In his sickness they two had grown to 
care for him, this lonely old man and the 
little happy child. He had a corner of the 
hut, with a heap of dry grass for his bed; 
and they had learned to listen eagerly for 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


23 


his breathing in the dark night, to tell 
them that he lived; and when he first was 
well enough to essay a loud, hollow, broken 
bay, they laughed aloud, and almost wept 
together for joy at such a sign of his sure 
restoration; and little Nello, in delighted 
glee, hung chains of marguerites round 
his rugged neck and kissed him with fresh 
and ruddy lips. 

So then, when Patrasche arose, himself 
again, strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his 
great, wistful eyes had a gentle astonish¬ 
ment in them that there were no curses to 
rouse him and no blows to drive him; 
and his heart awakened to a mighty love, 
which never wavered once in its fidelity 
while life abode with him. 

Patrasche, being a dog, was grateful. 
Patrasche lay pondering long with grave, 
tender, musing brown eyes, watching the 
movements of his friends. 

Now the old soldier, Jehan Daas, could 


24 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

do nothing for his living but limp about 
a little with a small cart, with which he 
carried daily into the town of Antwerp 
the milk cans of those happier neighbors 
who owned cattle. The villagers gave him 
the employment a little out of charity— 
more because it suited them well to send 
their milk into the town by so honest 
a carrier, and bide at home themselves 
to look after their gardens, their cows, 
their poultry, or their little fields. But 
it was becoming hard work for the old 
man. He was eighty-three, and Antwerp 
was a good league off, or more. 

Patrasche watched the milk cans come 
and go that one day when he had got well 
and was lying in the sun with the wreath 
of marguerites round his tawny neck. 

The next morning Patrasche, before 
the old man had touched the cart, arose 
and walked to it and placed himself be¬ 
twixt its handles, and testified, as plainly 



Patrasche tried to draw the cart with his teeth 













































26 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

as dumb show could do, his desire and his 
ability to work in return for the bread of 
charity that he had eaten. Jehan Daas 
resisted long, for the old man was one of 
those who thought it a foul shame to bind 
dogs to labor for which nature never 
formed them. But Patrasche would not 
be gainsaid; finding they did not harness 
him, he tried to draw the cart onward 
with his teeth. 

At length Jehan Daas gave way, 
vanquished by the persistence and the 
gratitude of this creature whom he had 
succored. He fashioned his cart so that 
Patrasche could run in it, and this he did 
every morning of his life thenceforward. 

When winter came, Jehan Daas thanked 
the blessed fortune that had brought him 
to the dying dog in the ditch that fair-day 
of Louvain; for he was very old, and he 
grew feebler with each year, and he would 
ill have known how to pull his load of 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


27 


milk cans over the snows and through 
the deep ruts in the mud if it had not been 
for the strength and the industry of the 
animal he had befriended. As for Pa- 
trasche, it seemed heaven to him. After 
the frightful burdens that his old mas¬ 
ter had compelled him to strain under, at 
the call of the whip at every step, it 
seemed nothing to him but amusement to 
step out with this little, light, green cart, 
with its bright brass cans, by the side of 
the gentle old man who always paid him 
with a tender caress and with a kindly 
word. Besides, his work was over by three 
or four in the day, and after that time 
he was free to do as he would—to stretch 
himself, to sleep in the sun, to wander in 
the fields, to romp with the young child, 
or to play with his fellow dogs. Patrasche 
was very happy. 

Fortunately for his peace, his former 
owner was killed in a drunken brawl at 


28 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


the kermis of Mechlin, and so sought not 
after him nor disturbed him in his new 
and well-loved home. 



IV 


A few years later, old Jehan Daas, who 
had always been a cripple, became so 
paralyzed with rheumatism that it was im¬ 
possible for him to go out with the cart 
any more. Then little Nello, being now 
grown to his sixth year of age and know¬ 
ing the town well from having accom¬ 
panied his grandfather so many times, 
took his place beside the cart, and sold 
the milk and received the coins in ex¬ 
change, and brought them back to their 
respective owners with a pretty grace and 
seriousness which charmed all who beheld 
him. 

The little Ardennois was a beautiful 
child, with dark, grave, tender eyes, and 
a lovely bloom upon his face, and fair 
locks that clustered to his throat; and 
many an artist sketched the group as it 
29 


30 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


went by him—the green cart with the 
brass flagons of Teniers and Mieris and 
Van Tal, and the great, tawny-colored, 
massive dog, with his belled harness that 
chimed cheerily as he went, and the small 
figure that ran beside him, which had little 
white feet in great wooden shoes, and a 
soft, grave, innocent, happy face like the 
little, fair children of Rubens. 

Nello and Patrasche did the work so 
well and so joyfully together that Jehan 
Daas himself, when the summer came and 
he was better again, had no need to stir 
out, but could sit in the doorway in the 
sun and see them go forth through the 
garden wicket, and then doze and dream 
and pray a little, and then awake again as 
the clock tolled three and watch for their 
return. And on their return Patrasche 
would shake himself free of his harness 
with a bay of glee, and Nello would re¬ 
count with pride the doings of the day; 



Nello and Patrasche did the work well and joyfully 
























32 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

and they would all go in together to their 
meal of rye bread and milk or soup, and 
would see the shadows lengthen over the 
great plain, and see the twilight veil the 
fair cathedral spire; and then lie down 
together to sleep peacefully while the old 
man said a prayer. 

So the days and the* years went on, and 
the lives of Nello and Patrasche were hap¬ 
py, innocent and healthful. 

In the spring and summer especially 
were they glad. Flanders is not a lovely 
land, and around the burgh of Rubens it 
is perhaps least lovely of all. Corn and 
colza, pasture and plow, succeed each 
other on the characterless plain in weary¬ 
ing repetition and, save by some gaunt 
gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, 
or some figure coming athwart the fields, 
made picturesque by a gleaner’s bundle 
or a woodman’s fagot, there is no change, 
no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


33 


who has dwelt upon the mountains or 
amidst the forests feels oppressed as by- 
imprisonment with the tedium and the 
endlessness of that vast and dreary level. 
But it is green and very fertile, and it has 
wide horizons that have a certain charm 
of their own, even in their dullness and 
monotony; and among the rushes by the 
waterside the flowers grow, and the trees 
rise tall and fresh where the barges glide, 
with their great hulks black against the 
sun, and their little green barrels and 
vari-colored flags gay against the leaves. 
Anyway, there is greenery and breadth of 
space enough to be as good as beauty to 
a child and a dog; and these two asked 
no better, when their work was done, than 
to lie buried in the lush grasses on the 
side of the canal, and watch the cumbrous 
vessels drifting by and bringing the crisp, 
salt smell of the sea among the blossom¬ 
ing scents of the country summer. 


34 AT DOG OF FLANDERS 

True, in the winter it was harder, and 
they had to rise in the darkness and the 
bitter cold, and they had seldom as much 
as they could have eaten any day, and the 
hut was scarce better than a shed when 
the nights were cold, although it looked so 
pretty in warm weather, buried in a great, 
kindly, clambering vine that never bore 
fruit, indeed, but which covered it with 
luxuriant green tracery all through the 
months of blossom and harvest. In winter 
the winds found many holes in the walls of 
the poor little hut, and the vine was black 
and leafless, and the bare lands looked 
very bleak and drear without, and some¬ 
times within the floor was flooded and then 
frozen. In winter it was hard, and the 
snow numbed the little white limbs of 
Nello, and the icicles cut the brave, untir¬ 
ing feet of Patrasche. 

But even then they were never heard 
to lament, either of them. The child’s 



They would watch the vessels drifting by 






















36 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

wooden shoes and the dog’s four legs 
would trot manfully together over the 
frozen fields to the chime of the bells on 
the harness; and then sometimes, in the 
streets of Antwerp, some housewife would 
bring them a bowl of soup and a handful 
of bread, or some kindly trader would 
throw some billets of fuel into the little 
cart as it went homeward, or some woman 
in their own village would bid them keep 
for their own food a share of the milk they 
carried; and then they would run over the 
white lands, through the early darkness, 
bright and happy, and burst with a shout 
of joy into their home. 

So, on the whole, it was well with them, 
very well; and Patrasche—meeting on the 
highway or in the public streets the many 
dogs who toiled from daybreak into night¬ 
fall, paid only with blows and curses and 
loosened from the shafts with a kick to 
starve and freeze as best they might— 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


37 


Patrasche, in his heart, was very grateful 
to his fate, and thought it the fairest and 
the kindliest the world could hold. Though 
he was often very hungry indeed when 
he lay down at night; though he had to 
work in the heats of summer noons and 
the rasping chills of winter dawns; though 
his feet were often tender with wounds 
from the sharp edges of the jagged pave¬ 
ment; though he had to perform tasks 
beyond his strength and against his na¬ 
ture—yet he was grateful and content; he 
did his duty with each day, and the eyes 
that he loved smiled down on him. It was 
sufficient for Patrasche. 


V 


There was only one thing which caused 
Patrasche any uneasiness in his life, and 
it was this. Antwerp, as all the world 
knows, is full at every turn of old piles of 
stones, dark and ancient and majestic, 
standing in crooked courts, jammed 
against gateways and taverns, rising by 
the water’s edge, with bells ringing above 
them in the air, and ever and again out of 
their arched doors a swell of music peal¬ 
ing. There they remain, the grand old 
sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst the 
squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unlove¬ 
liness, and the commerce of the modern 
world, and all day long the clouds. drift 
and the birds circle and the winds sigh 
around them, and beneath the earth at 
their feet there sleeps—Rubens. 

And the greatness of the mighty master 
38 


A DOG OF FLANDERS' 


39 


still rests upon Antwerp, and wherever we 
turn in its narrow streets his glory lies 
therein, so that all mean things are there¬ 
by transfigured; and as we pace slowly 
through the winding ways, and by the 
edge of the stagnant water, and through 
the noisome courts, his spirit abides with 
us, and the heroic beauty of his visions is 
about us, and the stones that once felt his 
footsteps and bore his shadow seem to 
arise and speak of him with living voices. 
For the city which is the tomb of Rubens 
still lives to us through him, and him 
alone. 

It is so quiet there by that great white 
sepulchre—so quiet, save only when the 
organ peals and the choir cries aloud the 
Salve Regina or the Kyrie Eleison. Surely 
no artist ever had a greater gravestone 
than that pure marble sanctuary gives to 
him in the heart of his birthplace in the 
chancel of St. Jacques. 


40 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Without Rubens, what were Antwerp? 
A dirty, dusky, bustling mart, which no 
man would ever care to look upon save 
the traders who do. business on its 
wharves. With Rubens, to the whole 
world of men it is a sacred name, a sacred 
soil, a Bethlehem where a god of art saw 
light, a Golgotha where a god of art lies 
dead. 

0 nations! closely should you treasure 
your great men, for by them alone will 
the future know of you. Flanders in her 
generations has been wise. In his life she 
glorified this greatest of her sons, and in 
his death she magnifies his name. But her 
wisdom is very rare. 

Now, the trouble of Patrasche was this. 
Into these great, sad piles of stones, that 
reared their melancholy majesty above 
the crowded roofs, the child Nello would 
many and many a time enter, and disap¬ 
pear through their dark, arched portals, 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


41 


while Patrasche, left without upon the 
pavement, would wearily and vainly pon¬ 
der on what could be the charm which 
thus allured from him his inseparable and 
beloved companion. Once or twice he did 
essay to see for himself, clattering up the 
steps with his milk cart behind him; but 
thereon he had always been sent back 
again summarily by a tall custodian in 
black clothes and silver chains of office; 
and, fearful of bringing his little master 
into trouble, he desisted, and remained 
couched patiently before the churches 
until such time as the boy reappeared. It 
was not the fact of his going into them 
which disturbed Patrasche: he knew that 
people went to church; all the village went 
to the small, tumble-down, gray pile op¬ 
posite the red windmill. What troubled 
him was that little Nello always looked 
strangely when he came out, always very 
flushed or very pale; and whenever he re- 


42 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


turned home after such visitations would 
sit silent and dreaming, not caring to play, 
but gazing out at the evening skies be¬ 
yond the line of the canal, very subdued 
and almost sad. 

What was it? wondered Patrasche. He 
thought it could not be good or natural 
for the little lad to be so grave, and in 
his dumb fashion he tried all he could to 
keep Nello by him in the sunny fields! 
or in the busy market place. But to the 
churches Nello would go: most often of 
all would he go to the great cathedral; and 
Patrasche, left without on the stones by 
the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys’s 
gate, would stretch himself and yawn and 
sigh, and even howl now and then, all in 
vain, until the doors closed and the child 
perforce came forth again and, winding 
his arms about the dog’s neck, would kiss 
him on his broad, tawny-colored forehead, 
and murmur always the same words: “If 



V v '<> 






ii 


w-Rw-x-: 


-- 

■.v vA/.v-" ■ ■: • /•. 


. 

: : • • 



" 

mgxmm f : ; ' \ I. ‘' 


He had always been sent back by 


a tall custodian 





























































































44 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


I could only see them, Patrasche!—if I 
could only see them!” 

What were they? pondered Patrasche, 
looking up with large, wistful, sympa¬ 
thetic eyes. One day, when the custodian 
was out of the way and the doors left ajar, 
he got in for a moment after his little 
friend and saw. “They” were two great 
covered pictures on either side of the choir. 

Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an 
ecstasy, before the altar picture of the 
Assumption, and when he noticed Pa¬ 
trasche, and rose and drew the dog gently 
out into the air, his face was wet with 
tears, and he looked up at the veiled places 
as he passed them, and murmured to his 
companion, “It is so terrible not to see 
them, Patrasche, just because one is poor 
and cannot pay! He never meant that the 
poor should not see them, when he painted 
them, I am sure. He would have had us 
see them any day, every day; of that I am 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 45 

sure. And they keep them shrouded there 
—shrouded in the dark, the beautiful 
things!—and they never feel the light, 
and no eyes look on them, unless rich peo¬ 
ple come and pay. If I could only see 
them, I would be content to die.” 

But he could not see them, and Pa- 
trasche could not help him, for to gain 
the silver piece that the church exacts 
as the price for looking on the glories 
of the Elevation of the Cross and the 
Descent from the Cross was a thing as ut¬ 
terly beyond the powers of either of them 
as it would have been to scale the heights 
of the cathedral spire. They had never 
so much as a sou to spare: if they cleared 
enough to get a little wood for the stove, 
a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost 
they could do. And yet the heart of the 
child was set in sore and endless longing 
upon beholding the greatness of the two 
veiled Rubens. 


VI 


The whole soul of the little Ardennois 
thrilled and stirred with an absorbing pas¬ 
sion for art. Going on his ways through 
the old city early in the day before the sun 
or the people had risen, Nello, who looked 
only a little peasant boy, with a great 
dog drawing milk to sell from door to 
door, walked in a heaven of dreams where¬ 
of Rubens was the god. Nello, cold and 
hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden 
shoes, and the winter winds blowing 
among his curls and lifting his poor, thin 
garments, dwelt in a rapture of medita¬ 
tion, wherein all that he saw was the beau¬ 
tiful, fair face of the Mary of the Assump¬ 
tion, with the waves of her golden hair ly¬ 
ing upon her shoulders, and the light of an 
eternal sun shining down upon her brow. 
Nello, reared in poverty and buffeted by 
46 



Patrasche saw him draw with chalk upon the stones 


















48 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

fortune and untaught in letters and un¬ 
heeded by men, had the compensation or 
the curse which is called Genius. 

No one knew it; he as little as any. 
No one knew it. Only, indeed, Patrasche, 
who, being with him always, saw him draw 
with chalk upon the stones any and every¬ 
thing that grew or breathed, heard him on 
his little bed of hay murmur all manner 
of timid, pathetic prayers to the spirit of 
the great master; watched his gaze dark¬ 
en and his face radiate at the evening 
glow of sunset or the rosy rising of the 
dawn; and felt many and many a time 
the tears of a strange, nameless pain and 
joy, mingled together, fall hotly from the 
bright young eyes upon his own wrinkled, 
yellow forehead. 

“I should go to my grave quite content 
if I thought, Nello, that when thou grow- 
est a man thou couldst own this hut and 
the little plot of ground, and labor for 





WfejSSi 


anH 





“Thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of ground” 





























50 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

thyself, and be called Baas by thy neigh¬ 
bors,” said the old man Jehan many an 
hour from his bed. For to own a bit of 
soil, and to be called Baas—master—by 
the hamlet round is to have achieved the 
highest ideal of a Flemish peasant; and 
the old soldier, who had wandered over 
all the earth in his youth and had brought 
nothing back, deemed in his old age that 
to live and die on one spot in contented 
humility was the fairest fate he could 
desire for his darling. But Nello said 
nothing. 

The same leaven was working in him 
that in other times begat Rubens and 
Jordaens and the Van Eycks, and all their 
wondrous tribe, and in times more recent 
begat in the green country of the Ar¬ 
dennes, where the Meuse washes the old 
walls of Dinant, the great artist of the 
Patroclus, whose genius is too near us for 
us aright to measure its divinity. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 51 

Nello dreamed of other things in the 
future than of tilling the little rood of 
earth, and living under the wattle roof, 
and being called Baas by neighbors a 
little poorer or a little less poor than him¬ 
self. The cathedral spire, where it rose 
beyond the fields in the ruddy evening 
skies or in the dim, gray, misty mornings, 
said other things to him than this. But 
these he told only to Patrasche, whisper¬ 
ing, childlike, his fancies in the dog’s ear 
when they went together at their work 
through the fogs of the daybreak, or lay 
together at their rest among the rustling 
rushes by the water’s side. 

For such dreams are not easily shaped 
into speech to awake the slow sympathies 
of human auditors; and they would only 
have sorely perplexed and troubled the 
poor old man bedridden in his corner, who, 
for his part, whenever he had trodden the 
streets of Antwerp, had thought the daub 


52 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


of blue and red that they called a Ma¬ 
donna, on the walls of the wineshop where 
he drank his sou’s worth of black beer, 
quite as good as any of the famous altar 
pieces for which the stranger folk trav¬ 
eled far and wide into Flanders from ev¬ 
ery land on which the good sun shone. 


VII 


There was only one other besides 
Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at all 
of his daring fantasies. This, other was 
little Alois, who lived at the old red mill 
on the grassy mound, and whose father, 
the miller, was the best-to-do husbandman 
in all the village. Little Alois was only a 
pretty child with soft, round, rosy fea¬ 
tures, made lovely by those sweet dark 
eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so 
many a Flemish face, in testimony of the 
Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left 
broad-sown throughout the country ma¬ 
jestic palaces and stately courts, gilded 
house fronts and sculptured lintels—his¬ 
tories in blazonry and poems in stone. 

Little Alois was often with Nello and 
Patrasche. They played in the fields, they 
ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies 
53 


54 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


and bilberries, they went up to the old 
gray church together, and they often sat 
together by the broad wood fire in the mill 
house. Little Alois, indeed, was the rich¬ 
est child in the hamlet. She had neither 
brother nor sister; her blue serge dress 
had never a hole in it; at kermis she had 
as many gilded nuts and Agni Dei in 
sugar as her hands could hold; and when 
she went up for her first communion her 
flaxen curls were covered with a cap of 
richest Mechlin lace, which had been her 
mother’s and her grandmother’s before it 
came to her. Men spoke already, though 
she had but twelve years, of the good wife 
she would be for their sons to woo and 
win; but she herself was a little gay, sim¬ 
ple child, in no wise conscious of her heri¬ 
tage, and she loved no playfellows so well 
as Jehan Daas’s grandson and his dog. 

One day her father, Baas Cogez, a 
good man, but somewhat stern, came on 



At kermis Alois had many gilded nuts and Agni Dei 































































56 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


a pretty group in the long meadow behind 
the mill, where the aftermath had that 
day been cut. It was his little daughter 
sitting amidst the hay, with the great, 
tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and 
many wreaths of poppies and blue corn¬ 
flowers round them both. On a clean, 
smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello 
drew their likeness with a stick of char¬ 
coal. 

The miller stood and looked at the por¬ 
trait with tears in his eyes, it was so 
strangely like, and he loved his only child 
closely and well. Then he roughly chid 
the little girl for idling there while her 
mother needed her within, and sent her 
indoors crying and afraid: then, turning, 
he snatched the wood from Nello’s hands. 
“Dost do much of such folly?” he asked, 
but there was a tremble in his voice. 

Nello colored and hung his head. “I 
draw everything I see,” he murmured. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


57 


The miller was silent; then he stretched 
his hand out with a franc in it. “It is 
folly, as I say, and evil waste of time; 
nevertheless, it is like Alois, and will 
please the housemother. Take this silver 
bit for it and leave it for me.” 

The color died out of the face of the 
young Ardennois; he lifted his head and 
put his hands behind his back. “Keep 
your money and the portrait both, Baas 
Cogez,” he said simply. “You have often 
been good to me.” Then he called Pa- 
trasche to him, and walked away across 
the fields. 

“I could have seen them with that 
franc,” he murmured to Patrasche, “but 
I could not sell her picture—not even for 
them.” 

Baas Cogez went into his mill house 
sore troubled in his mind. “That lad must 
not be so much with Alois,” he said to his 
wife that night. “Trouble may come of 



Baas Cogez went 


into his 


mill house sore troubled 


« 












































A DOG OF FLANDERS 59 

it hereafter; he is fifteen now, and she is 
twelve, and the boy is comely of face and 
form.” 

“And he is a good lad and a loyal,” said 
the housewife, feasting her eyes on the 
piece of pine wood where it was throned 
above the chimney with a cuckoo clock in 
oak and a Calvary in wax. 

“Yea, I do not gainsay that,” said the 
miller, draining his pewter flagon. 

“Then, if what you think of were ever 
to come to pass,” said the wife, hesitat¬ 
ingly, “would it matter so much? She 
will have enough for both, and one cannot 
be better than happy.” 

“You are a woman, and therefore a 
fool,” said the miller harshly, striking his 
pipe on the table. “The lad is naught 
but a beggar, and, with these painter’s 
fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a 
care that they are not together in the fu¬ 
ture, or I will send the child to the surer 


60 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

keeping of the nuns of the Sacred 
Heart.” 

The poor mother was terrified, and 
promised humbly to do his will. Not that 
she could bring herself altogether to sepa¬ 
rate the child from her favorite playmate, 
nor did the miller even desire that extreme 
of cruelty to a young lad who was guilty 
of nothing except poverty. But there 
were many ways in which little Alois was 
kept away from her chosen companion; 
and Nello, being a boy proud and quiet 
and sensitive, was quickly wounded, and 
ceased to turn his own steps and those of 
Patrasche, as he had been used to do with 
every moment of leisure, to the old red 
mill upon the slope. What his offense was 
he did not know: he supposed he had in 
some manner angered Baas Cogez by tak¬ 
ing the portrait of Alois in the meadow; 
and when the child who loved him would 
run to him and nestle her hand in his, he 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 61 

would smile at her very sadly and say with 
a tender concern for her before himself, 
“Nay, Alois, do not anger your father. 
He thinks that I make you idle, dear, and 
he is not pleased that you should be with 
me. He is a good man and loves you 
Well; we will not anger him, Alois.” 

But it was with a sad heart that he said 
it, and the earth did not look so bright to 
him as it had used to do when he went out 
at sunrise under the poplars down the 
straight roads with Patrasche. The old 
red mill had been a landmark to him, and 
he had been used to pause by it, going and 
coming, for a cheery greeting with its 
people as Alois’s little flaxen head rose 
above the low mill wicket, and her little 
rosy hands had held out a bone or a crust 
to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully 
at a closed door, and the boy went on 
without pausing, with a pang at his heart, 
and the child sat within with tears drop- 


62 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


ping slowly on the knitting to which she 
was set on her little stool by the stove; 
and Baas Cogez, working among his 
sacks and his mill gear, would harden his 
will and say to himself, “It is best so. 
The lad is all but a beggar, and full of 
idle, dreaming fooleries. Who knows what 
mischief might not come of it in the fu¬ 
ture?” So he was wise in his generation, 
and would not have the door unbarred, 
except upon rare and formal occasions, 
which seemed to have neither warmth nor 
mirth in them to the two children, who 
had been accustomed so long to a daily 
gleeful, careless, happy interchange of 
greeting, speech and pastime, with no 
other watcher of their sports or auditor 
of their fancies than Patrasche, sagely 
shaking the brazen bells of his collar and 
responding with all a dog’s swift sympa¬ 
thies to their every change of mood. 

All this while the little panel of pine 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


63 


wood remained over the chimney in the 
mill kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the 
waxen Calvary; and sometimes it seemed 
to Nello a little hard that, while his gift 
was accepted, he himself should be denied. 


VIII 


But Nello did not complain; it was his 
habit to be quiet. Old Jehan Daas had 
ever said to him, “We are poor; we must 
take what God sends—the ill with the 
good: the poor cannot choose.” 

To which the boy had always listened in 
silence, being reverent of his old grand¬ 
father; but nevertheless a certain vague, 
sweet hope, such as beguiles the children 
of genius, had whispered in his heart, 
“Yet the poor do choose sometimes— 
choose to be great, so that men cannot say 
them nay.” And he thought so still in his 
innocence; and one day when the little 
Alois, finding him by chance alone among 
the cornfields by the canal, ran to him and 
held him close, and sobbed piteously be¬ 
cause the morrow would be her saint’s 
day, and for the first time in all her life 
64 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


65 


her parents had failed to bid him to the 
little supper and romp in the great barns 
with which her feast day was always cele¬ 
brated, Nello had kissed her and mur¬ 
mured to her in firm faith, “It shall be 
different one day, Alois. One day that 
little bit of pine wood that your father 
has of mine shall be worth its weight in 
silver, and he will not shut the door 
against me then. Only love me always, 
dear little Alois, only love me always, and 
I will be great.” 

“And if I do not love you?” the pretty 
child asked, pouting a little through her 
tears, and moved by the instinctive co¬ 
quetries of her sex. 

Nello’s eyes left her face and wandered 
to the distance, where in the red and gold 
of the Flemish night the cathedral spire 
rose. There was a smile on his face so 
sweet and yet so sad that little Alois was 
awed by it. “I will be great still,” he said 


66 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

under his breath—“great still, or die, 
Alois.” 

“You do not love me,” said the little 
spoilt child, pushing him away; but the 
boy shook his head and smiled, and went 
on his way through the tall yellow corn, 
seeing as in a vision some day in a fair 
future when he should come into that old 
familiar land and ask Alois of her people, 
and be not refused or denied but received 
in honor, while the village folk should 
throng to look upon him and say in one 
another’s ears, “Dost see him? He is a 
king among men, for he is a great artist 
and the world speaks his name; and yet 
he was only our poor little Nello, who 
was a beggar, as one may say, and only 
got his bread by the help of his dog.” 
And he thought how he would fold his 
grandsire in furs and purples and portray 
him as the old man is portrayed in the 
Family in the chapel of St. Jacques; and 





Nello’s eyes left her face and wandered to the distance 











68 . A DOG OF FLANDERS 

of how he would hang the throat of Pa- 
trasche with a collar of gold, and place 
him on his right hand, and say to the peo¬ 
ple, “This was once my only friend”; and 
of how he would build himself a great 
white marble palace, and make to him¬ 
self luxuriant gardens of pleasure on the 
slope looking outward to where the 
cathedral spire rose, and not dwell in it 
himself, but summon to it, as to a home, 
all men young and poor and friendless, 
but of the will to do mighty things; and 
of how he would say to them always, if 
they sought to bless his name, “Nay, do 
not thank me—thank Rubens. Without 
him, what should I have been?” And 
these dreams—beautiful, impossible, inno¬ 
cent, free of all selfishness, full of hero- 
ical worship—were so closely about him 
as he .went that he was happy; happy 
even on this sad anniversary of Alois’s 
saint’s day, when he and Patrasche went 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


69 


home by themselves to the little dark hut 
and the meal of black bread, while in the 
mill house all the children of the village 
sang and laughed, and ate the big round 
cakes of Dijon and the almond ginger¬ 
bread of Brabant, and danced in the great 
barn to the light of the stars and the 
music of flute and fiddle. 

“Never mind, Patrasche,” he said, with 
his arms round the dog’s neck as they 
both sat in the door of the hut, where the 
sounds of the mirth at the mill came down 
to them on the night air—“never mind. 
It shall all be changed by and by.” 

Nello believed in the future: Patrasche, 
of more experience and of more philoso¬ 
phy, thought that the loss of the mill sup¬ 
per in the present was ill compensated by 
dreams of milk and honey in some vague 
hereafter. And Patrasche growled when¬ 
ever he passed by Baas Cogez. 

“This is Alois’s name-day, is it not?” 


70 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

said the old man Daas that night from the 
corner where he was stretched upon his 
bed of sacking. The boy gave a gesture 
of assent: he wished that the old man’s 
memory had erred a little, instead of keep¬ 
ing such sure account. 

“And why not there?” his grandfather 
pursued. “Thou hast never missed a year 
before, Nello.” 

“Thou art too sick to leave,” murmured 
the lad, bending his handsome young 
head over the bed. 

“Tut! tut! Mother Nulette would have 
come and sat with me, as she does scores 
of times. What is the cause, Nello?” the 
old man persisted. “Thou surely hast not 
had ill words with the little one?” 

“Nay, grandfather—-never,” said the 
boy quickly, with a hot color in his bent 
face. “Simply and truly, Baas Cogez did 
not have me asked this year. He has 
taken some whim against me.” 



All the casements of the mill house were lighted 




























72 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


“But thou hast done nothing wrong?” 

“That I know—nothing. I took the por¬ 
trait of Alois on a piece of pine; that is 
all.” 

“Ah!” The old man was silent; the 
truth suggested itself to him with the 
boy’s innocent answer. He was tied to a 
bed of dried leaves in the corner of a wat¬ 
tle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten 
what the ways of the world were like. 

He drew Nello’s fair head fondly to his 
breast with a tender gesture. “Thou 
art very poor, my child,” he said, with a 
quiver the more in his aged, trembling 
voice—“so poor! It is very hard for 
thee.” 

“Nay, I am rich,” murmured Nello; 
and in his innocence he thought so—rich 
with the imperishable powers that are 
mightier than the might of kings. And 
he went and stood by the door of the hut 
in the quiet autumn night, and watched 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


73 


the stars troop by and the tall poplars 
bend and shiver in the wind. All the 
casements of the mill house were lighted, 
and every now and then the notes of a 
flute came to him. The tears fell down his 
cheeks, for he was but a child, yet he 
smiled, for he said to himself, “In the 
future!” He stayed there until all was 
quite still and dark, then he and Patrasche 
went within and slept together long and 
deeply, side by side. 


IX 


Now Nello had a secret which only 
Patrasche knew. There was a little out¬ 
house to the hut, which no one entered but 
himself—a dreary place, but with abun¬ 
dant clear light from the north. Here he 
had fashioned himself rudely an easel in 
rough lumber, and here on a great gray 
sea of stretched paper he had given shape 
to one of the innumerable fancies which 
possessed his brain. No one had ever 
taught him anything; colors he had no 
means to buy; he had gone without bread 
many a time to procure even the few rude 
tools that he had here; and it was only 
in black or white that he could fashion the 
things he saw. This great figure which he 
had drawn here in chalk was only an old 
man sitting on a fallen tree—only that. He 
had seen old Michel, the woodman, sitting 
• 74 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


75 


so at evening many a time. He had never 
had a soul to tell him of outline or per¬ 
spective, of anatomy or of shadow, and 
yet he had given all the weary, worn-out 
age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the 
rugged, careworn pathos of his original, 
and given them so that the old, lonely fig¬ 
ure was a poem, sitting there, meditative 
and alone, on the dead tree, with the 
darkness of the descending night behind 
him. 

It was rude, of course, in a way, and 
had many faults, no doubt; and yet it was 
real, true in nature, true in art, and very 
mournful, and in a manner beautiful. 

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours 
watching its gradual creation after the 
labor of each day was done, and he knew 
that Nello had a hope—vain and wild, 
perhaps, but strongly cherished—of send¬ 
ing this great drawing to compete for 
a prize of two hundred francs a year 



* 


~~~ 


* ZZ-m 






..—■ 


— 


™] 



r — 


r~ ■'f 


. 1 

— 





















.—— 4 


Nello had a hope of sending this drawing 
























































































































A DOG OF FLANDERS 77 

which it was announced in Antwerp would 
be open to every lad of talent, scholar or 
peasant, under eighteen, who would at¬ 
tempt to win it with some unaided work 
of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost 
artists in the town of Rubens were to be 
the judges and elect the victor according 
to his merits. 

All the spring and summer and autumn 
Nello had been at work upon this treas¬ 
ure, which, if triumphant, would build him 
his first step toward independence and 
the mysteries of the art which he blindly, 
ignorantly, and yet passionately adored. 

He said nothing to any one; his grand¬ 
father would not have understood, and 
little Alois was lost to him. Only to 
Patrasche he told all, and whispered, 
“Rubens would give it to me, I think, if 
he knew.” 

Patrasche thought so, too, for he knew 
that Rubens had loved dogs, or he would 


78 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

never have painted them with such ex¬ 
quisite fidelity; and men who loved dogs 
were, as Patrasche knew, always pitiful. 

The drawings were to go in on the first 
day of December, and the decision was to 
be given on the twenty-fourth, so that he 
who should win might rejoice with all his 
people at the Christmas season. 

In the twilight of a bitter, wintry day, 
and with a beating heart, now quick with 
hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed 
the great picture on his little green milk 
cart, and took it, with the help of Pa¬ 
trasche, into the town, and there left it, 
as enjoined, at the doors of a public 
building. 

“Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. 
How can I tell?” he thought, with the 
heartsickness of a great timidity. Now 
that he had left it there, it seemed to him 
so hazardous, so vain, so foojish, to dream 
that he, a little lad with bare feet, who 



Nello placed the 


great picture on his little milk cart 


















































80 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

barely knew his letters, could do anything 
at which great painters, real artists, could 
ever deign to look. Yet he took heart as 
he went by the cathedral: the lordly form 
of Rubens seemed to rise from the fog 
and the darkness, and to loom in its mag¬ 
nificence before him, while the lips with 
their kindly smile seemed to him to mur¬ 
mur, “Nay, have courage! It was not by a 
weak heart and by faint fears that I wrote 
my name for all time upon Antwerp.” 

Nello ran home through the cold night, 
comforted. He had done his best: the 
rest must be as God willed, he thought, in 
that innocent, unquestioning faith which 
had been taught him in the little gray 
chapel among the willows and the pop¬ 
lar trees. 

The winter was very sharp already. 
That night, after they had reached the 
hut, snow fell; and fell for very many 
days after that, so that the paths and the 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 81 

divisions in the fields were all obliterated, 
and all the smaller streams were frozen 
over, and the cold was intense upon the 
plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work 
to go round for the milk while the world 
was all dark, and carry it through the 
darkness to the silent town. Hard work, 
especially for Patrasche, for the passage 
of the years, that were only bringing Nello 
a stronger youth, were bringing him old 
age; and his joints were stiff and his 
bones ached often. But he would never 
give up his share of the labor. Nello 
would fain have spared him and drawn 
the cart himself, but Patrasche would not 
allow it. All he would ever permit or 
accept was the help of a thrust from be¬ 
hind to the little truck, as it lumbered 
along through the ice ruts. Patrasche had 
lived in harness, and he was proud of it. 
He suffered a great deal sometimes from 
frost, and the terrible roads, and the 


82 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

rheumatic pains of his limbs, but he only 
drew his breath hard and bent his stout 
neck, and trod onward with steady pa¬ 
tience. 

“Rest thee at home, Patrasche—it is 
time thou didst rest—and I can quite well 
push in the cart by myself,” urged Nello 
many a morning; but Patrasche, who un¬ 
derstood him aright, would no more have 
consented to stay at home than a veteran 
soldier to shirk when the charge was 
sounding; and every day he would rise and 
place himself in his shafts, and plod along 
over the snow through the fields that his 
four round feet had left their print upon 
so many, many years. 

“One must never rest till one dies,” 
thought Patrasche; and sometimes it 
seemed to him that that time of rest for 
him was not very far off. His sight was 
less clear than it had been, and it gave 
him pain to rise after the night’s sleep, 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 83 

though he would never lie a moment in 
his straw when once the bell of the chapel 
tolling five let him know that the day¬ 
break of labor had begun. 

“My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie 
quiet together, you and I,” said old Jehan 
Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of 
Patrasche with the old withered hand 
which had always shared with him its one 
poor crust of bread; and the hearts of the 
old man and the old dog ached together 
with one thought: When they were gone, 
who would care for their darling? 


X 


One afternoon, as they came back from 
Antwerp over the snow, which had become 
hard and smooth as marble over all the 
Flemish plains, they found dropped in the 
road a pretty little puppet, a tambourine 
player, all scarlet and gold, about six 
inches high, and, unlike greater person¬ 
ages when Fortune lets them drop, quite 
unspoiled and unhurt by its fall. It was 
a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, 
and, failing, thought it was just the thing 
to please Alois. 

It was quite night when he passed the 
mill house: he knew the little window 
of her room. It could be no harm, he 
thought, if he gave her his little piece of 
treasure-trove, they had been playfellows 
so long. There was a shed with a sloping 
roof beneath her casement: he climbed it 
84 



“Here is a doll I found in the snow” 








































86 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

and tapped softly at the lattice: there was 
a little light within. The child opened it 
and looked out, half frightened. Nello 
put the tambourine player into her hands. 
“Here is a doll I found in the snow, Alois. 
Take it,” he whispered, “take it, and God 
bless thee, dear!” 

He slid down from the shed roof before 
she had time to thank him, and ran off 
through the darkness. 

That night there was a fire at the mill. 
Outbuildings and much corn were de¬ 
stroyed, although the mill itself and the 
dwelling house were unharmed. All the 
village was out in terror, and engines 
came tearing through the snow from 
Antwerp. The miller was insured, and 
would lose nothing; nevertheless, he was 
in furious wrath, and declared aloud that 
the fire was due to no accident, but to 
some foul intent. 

Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


87 


help with the rest: Baas Cogez thrust him 
angrily aside. “Thou wert loitering here 
after dark,” he said roughly. “I believe, 
on my soul, that thou dost know more of 
the fire than any one.” 

Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, 
not supposing that any one could say such 
things except in jest, and not compre¬ 
hending how any one could pass a jest at 
such a time. 

Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal 
thing openly to many of his neighbors in 
the day that followed; and though no se¬ 
rious charge was ever preferred against 
the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had 
been seen in the mill yard after dark on 
some unspoken errand, and that he bore 
Baas Cogez a grudge for forbidding his 
intercourse with little Alois; and so the 
hamlet, which followed the sayings of its 
richest landowner servilely, and whose 
families all hoped to secure the riches of 


88 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Alois in some future time for their sons, 
took the hint to give grave looks and cold 
words to old Jehan Daas’s grandson. No 
one said anything to him openly, but all 
the village agreed together to humor the 
miller’s prejudice, and at the cottages and 
farms where Nello and Patrasche called 
every morning for the milk for Antwerp, 
downcast glances and brief phrases re¬ 
placed for them the bro^d smiles and 
cheerful greetings to which they had been 
always used. No one really credited the 
miller’s absurd suspicions, nor the outra¬ 
geous accusations born of them, but the 
people were all very poor and very igno¬ 
rant, and the one rich man of the place 
had pronounced against him. Nello, in 
his innocence and his friendlessness, had 
no strength to stem the popular tide. 

“Thou art very cruel to the lad,” the 
miller’s wife dared to say, weeping, to her 
lord. “Surely he is an innocent lad and 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


89 


faithful, and would never dream of any 
such wickedness, however sore his heart 
might be.” 

But Baas Cogez, being an obstinate 
man, having once said a thing, held to 
it doggedly, though in his innermost soul 
he knew well the injustice he was com¬ 
mitting. 

Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury 
done him with a certain proud patience 
that disdained to complain; he only gave 
way a little when he was quite alone with 
old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, “If 
it should win! They will be sorry then, 
perhaps.” 

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen and who 
had dwelt in one little world all his short 
life, and in his childhood had been ca¬ 
ressed and applauded on all sides, it was a 
hard trial to have the whole of that little 
world turn against him for naught. Es¬ 
pecially hard in that bleak, snowbound, 


90 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


famine-stricken wintertime, when the only 
light and warmth that could be found 
abode beside the village hearths and in the 
kindly greetings of neighbors. In the win¬ 
tertime all drew nearer to each other, all 
to all, except to Nello and Patrasche, with 
whom none now would have anything to 
do, and who were left to fare as they 
might with the old, paralyzed, bedrid¬ 
den man in the little cabin, whose fire was 
often low, and whose board was often 
without bread; for there was a buyer from 
Antwerp who had taken to driving his 
mule into the village daily for the milk 
of the various dairies, and there were only 
three or four of the people who had re¬ 
fused his terms of purchase and remained 
faithful to the little green cart. So that 
the burden which Patrasche drew had be¬ 
come very light, and the centime pieces 
in Nello’s pouch had become, alas! very 
few likewise. 



The dog would stop at all the familiar gates 





















































































92 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

The dog would stop, as usual, at all the 
familiar gates which were now closed to 
him, and look up at them with wistful, 
mute appeal; and it cost the neighbors a 
pang to shut their doors and their hearts, 
and let Patrasche draw his cart on again, 
empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for they 
desired to please Baas Cogez. 


XI 


Noel was close at hand. The weather 
was very wild and cold. The snow was six 
feet deep, and the ice was firm enough to 
bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. 
At this season the little village was al¬ 
ways gay and cheerful. At the poorest 
dwelling there were possets and cakes, 
joking and dancing, sugared saints and 
gilded figures. The merry Flemish bells 
jingled everywhere on the horses; every¬ 
where within doors some well-filled soup 
pot sang and smoked over the stove; and 
everywhere over the snow without, laugh¬ 
ing maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs 
and stout kirtles, going to and from the 
mass. Only in the little hut it was very 
dark and very cold. 

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly 
alone, for one night in the week before 
93 


94 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

Christmas Day, Death entered there, and 
took away from life forever old Jehan 
Daas, who had never known of life aught 
save its poverty and its pains. He had 
long been half dead, incapable of any 
movement except a feeble gesture, and 
powerless for anything beyond a gentle 
word; and yet his loss fell on them both 
with a great horror in it; they mourned 
him passionately. He had passed away 
from them in his sleep, and when, in the 
gray dawn, they learned of their bereave¬ 
ment, unutterable solitude and desolation 
seemed to close around them. He had long 
been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old 
man, who could not raise a hand in their 
defence, but he had loved them well; his 
smile had always welcomed their return. 
They mourned for him unceasingly, refus¬ 
ing to be comforted, as in the white winter 
day they followed the deal shell that held 
his body to the nameless grave by the little 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 95 

gray church. They were his only mourn¬ 
ers, these two whom he had left friendless 
upon earth—the young boy and the old 
dog. 

“Surely, he will relent now and let the 
poor lad come hither?” thought the mil¬ 
ler’s wife, glancing at her husband where 
he smoked by the hearth. 

Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he 
hardened his heart and would not unbar 
his door as the little, humble funeral went 
by. “The boy is a beggar,” he said to him¬ 
self : “he shall not be about Alois.” 

The woman dared not say anything 
aloud, but when the grave was closed and 
the mourners had gone, she put a wreath 
of immortelles into Alois’s hands and bade 
her go and lay it reverently on the dark, 
unmarked mound where the snow was 
displaced. 

Nello and Patrasche went home with 
broken hearts. But even of that poor, 


96 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

melancholy, cheerless home they were de¬ 
nied the consolation. There was a month’s 
rent overdue for their little home, and 
when Nello had paid the last sad service to 
the dead, he had not a coin left. He went 
and begged grace of the owner of the hut, 
a cobbler who went every Sunday night to 
drink his pint of wine and smoke with 
Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant no 
mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and 
loved money. He claimed in default of 
his rent every stick and stone, every pot 
and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and 
Patrasche be out of it on the morrow. 

Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and 
in some sense miserable enough, yet their 
hearts clove to it with a great affection. 
They had been so happy there, and in 
the summer, with its clambering vine and 
its flowering beans, it was so pretty and 
bright in the midst of the sun-lighted 
fields! Their life in it had been full of 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


97 


labor and privation, and yet they had been 
so well content, so gay of heart, running 
together to meet the old man’s never-fail¬ 
ing smile of welcome! 

All night long the boy and the dog sat 
by the fireless hearth in the darkness, 
drawn close together for warmth and sor¬ 
row. Their bodies were insensible to the 
cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in 
them. 

When the morning broke over the white, 
chill earth, it was the morning of Christ¬ 
mas Eve. With a shudder, Nello clasped 
close to him his only friend, while his tears 
fell hot and fast on the dog’s broad fore¬ 
head. “Let us go, Patrasche—dear, dear 
Patrasche,” he murmured. “We will not 
wait to be kicked out: let us go.” 

Patrasche had no will but his and 
they went sadly, side by side, out from 
the little place which was so dear to them 
both, and in which every humble, homely 


98 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


thing was to them precious and beloved. 
Patrasche drooped his head wearily as he 
passed by his own green cart; it was no 
longer his—it had to go with the rest to 
pay the rent, and his brass harness lay idle 
and glittering on the snow. The dog could 
have lain down beside it and died for very 
heartsickness as he went, but while the 
lad lived and needed him, Patrasche would 
not yield and give way. 

They took the old accustomed road into 
Antwerp. The day had yet scarce more 
than dawned; most of the shutters were 
still closed, but some of the villagers were 
about. They took no notice while the 
dog and the boy passed by them. At one 
door Nello paused and looked wistfully 
within; his grandfather had done many 
a kindly turn in neighbor’s service to the 
people who* dwelt there. 

“Would you give Patrasche a crust?” 
he said timidly. “He is old, and he has 



They went sadly, side by side 


























































100 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


had nothing since yesterday forenoon.” 

The woman shut the door hastily, mur¬ 
muring some vague saying about wheat 
and rye being very dear that season. The 
boy and the dog went on again wearily: 
they asked no more. 

By slow and painful stages they reached 
Antwerp as the chimes tolled ten. 

“If I had anything about me I could 
sell to get him bread!” thought Nello, but 
he had nothing except the wisp of linen 
and serge that covered him, and his pair 
of wooden shoes. 

Patrasche understood, and nestled his 
nose into the lad’s hand, as though to pray 
him not to be disquieted for any woe or 
want of his. 

The winner of the drawing-prize was to 
be proclaimed at noon, and to the public 
building where he had left his treasure 
Nello made his way. On the steps and in 
the entrance hall was a crowd of youths— 


A. DOG OF FLANDERS 


101 


some of his age, some older, all with par¬ 
ents or relatives or friends. His heart 
was sick with fear as he went among 
them, holding Patrasche close to him. The 
great bells of the city clashed out the 
hour of noon with brazen clamor. The 
doors of the inner hall were opened; the 
eager, panting throng rushed in; it was 
known that the selected picture would be 
raised above the rest upon a wooden dais. 

A mist obscured Nello’s sight, his head 
swam, his limbs almost failed him. When 
his vision cleared he saw the drawing 
raised on high: it was not his own! A 
slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming 
aloud that victory had been adjudged to 
Stephan Kiesslinger, born in the burgh of 
Antwerp, son of a wharfinger in that town. 


XII 


When Nello recovered his consciousness 
he was lying on the stones without, and 
Patrasche was trying with every art he 
knew to call him back to life. In the dis¬ 
tance a throng of the youths of Antwerp 
were shouting around their successful 
comrade, and escorting him with acclama¬ 
tions to his home upon the quay. 

The boy staggered to his feet and drew 
the dog into his embrace. “It is all over, 
dear Patrasche,” he murmured; “all over!” 

He rallied himself as best he could, for 
he was weak from fasting, and retraced 
his steps to the village. Patrasche paced 
by his side with his head drooping and his 
old limbs feeble from hunger and sorrow. 

The snow was falling fast: a keen hur¬ 
ricane blew from the north: it was bitter 
as death on the plains. It took them long 
102 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 103 

to traverse the familiar path, and the bells 
were sounding four of the clock as they 
approached the hamlet. Suddenly Pa- 
trasche paused, arrested by a scent in the 
snow, scratched, whined, and drew out 
with his teeth a small case of brown 
leather. He held it up to Nello in the 
darkness. Where they were there stood 
a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully 
under the cross; the boy mechanically 
turned the case to the light: on it was the 
name of Baas Cogez, and within it were 
notes for two thousand francs. 

The sight roused the lad a little from 
his stupor. He thrust the case in his shirt, 
and stroked Patrasche, and drew him on¬ 
ward. The dog looked up wistfully into 
his face. 

Nello made straight for the mill house, 
and went to the house door and struck on 
its panels. The miller’s wife opened it 
weeping, with little Alois clinging close to 


104 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

her. “Is it thee, thou poor lad?” she said 
kindly, through her tears. “Get thee gone 
ere the Baas see thee. We are in sore 
trouble tonight. He is out seeking for a 
power of money that he has let fall riding 
homeward, and in this snow he will never 
find it; and God knows it will go nigh to 
ruin us. It is Heaven’s own judgment for 
the things we have done to thee.” 

Nello put the note case in her hand and 
called Patrasche within the house. “Pa- 
trasche found the money tonight,” he 
said quickly. “Tell Baas Cogez so; I 
think he will not deny the dog shelter 
and food in his old age. Keep him from 
pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good 
to him.” 

Ere either woman or dog knew what he 
meant he had stooped and kissed Pa¬ 
trasche, then closed the door hurriedly, 
and disappeared in the gloom of the fast¬ 
falling night. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


105 


The woman and the child stood speech¬ 
less with joy and fear. Patrasche vainly 
spent the fury of his anguish against 
the iron-bound oak of the barred house 
door. They did not dare unbar the door 
and let him forth: they tried all they could 
to solace him. They brought him sweet 
cakes and juicy meats; they tempted him 
with the best they had; they tried to lure 
him to abide by the warmth of the hearth; 
but it was of no avail. Patrasche refused 
to be comforted or to stir from the barred 
portal. 

It was six o’clock when from an oppo¬ 
site entrance the miller at last came, jaded 
and broken, into his wife’s presence. “It 
is lost forever,” he said, with an ashen 
cheek and a quiver in his stern voice. 
“We have looked with lanterns every¬ 
where; it is gone—the little maiden’s por¬ 
tion and all!” 

His wife put the money into his hand, 


' w ~' x ' 



Patrasche refused to be comforted 

























































A DOG OF FLANDERS 107 

and told him how it had come to her. The 
strong man sank trembling into a seat 
and covered his face, ashamed and almost 
afraid. “I have been cruel to the lad,” 
he muttered at length. “I deserved not to 
have good at his hands.” 

Little Alois, taking courage, crept close 
to her father and nestled against him her 
fair, curly head. “Nello may come here 
again, father?” she whispered. “He may 
come tomorrow as he used to do?” 

The miller pressed her in his arms: his 
hard, sunburnt face was very pale and 
his mouth trembled. “Surely, surely,” he 
answered his child. “He shall bide here 
on Christmas Day, and any other day he 
will. God helping me, I will make amends 
to the boy—I will make amends.” 

Little Alois kissed him in gratitude and 
joy, then slid from his knees and ran to 
where the dog kept watch by the door. 
“And tonight I may feast Patrasche?” 


108 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

she cried in a child’s thoughtless glee. 

Her father bent his head gravely: “Ay, 
ay! let the dog have the best”; for the 
stern old man was moved and shaken to 
his heart’s depths. 

It was Christmas Eve, and the mill 
house was filled with oak logs and squares 
of turf, with cream and honey, with meat 
and bread, and the rafters were hung with 
wreaths of evergreen, and the Calvary 
and the cuckoo clock looked out from a 
mass of holly. There were little paper 
lanterns, too, for Alois, and toys of vari¬ 
ous fashions and sweetmeats in bright- 
pictured papers. There were light and 
warmth and abundance everywhere, and 
the child would fain have made the dog 
a guest honored and feasted. 

But Patrasche would neither lie in the 
warmth nor share in the cheer. Famished 
he was and very cold, but without Nello 
he would partake neither of comfort nor 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


109 


food. Against all temptation he was proof 
and close against the door he leaned al¬ 
ways, watching only for a means of es¬ 
cape. 

“He wants the lad,” said Baas Cogez. 
“Good dog! good dog! I will go over to 
the lad the first thing at day-dawn.” For 
no one but Patrasche knew that Nello had 
left the hut, and no one but Patrasche di¬ 
vined that Nello had gone to face starva¬ 
tion and misery alone. 


XIII 


The mill kitchen was very warm; great 
logs crackled and flamed on the hearth; 
neighbors came in for a glass of wine and 
a slice of the fat goose baking for supper. 
Alois, gleeful and sure of her playmate 
back on the morrow, bounded and sang 
and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas 
Cogez, in the fullness of his heart, smiled 
on her through moistened eyes, and 
spoke of the way in which he would be¬ 
friend her favorite companion; the house¬ 
mother sat with calm, contented face at 
the spinning-wheel; the cuckoo in the 
clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst it 
all Patrasche was bidden with a thousand 
words of welcome to tarry there a cher¬ 
ished guest. But neither peace nor plenty 
could allure him where Nello was not. 

When the supper smoked on the board, 
110 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 111 

and the voices were loudest and gladdest, 
and the Christ child brought choicest gifts 
to Alois, Patrasche, watching always an 
occasion, glided out when the door was un¬ 
latched by a careless newcomer, and as 
swiftly as his weak and tired limbs would 
bear him, sped over the snow in the bitter, 
black night. He had only one thought— 
to follow Nello. A human friend might 
have paused for the pleasant meal, the 
cheery warmth, the cozy slumber; but that 
was not the friendship of Patrasche. He 
remembered a bygone time, when ah old 
man and a little child had found him sick 
unto death in the wayside ditch. 

Snow had fallen freshly all the evening 
long; it was now nearly ten; the trail 
of the boy’s footsteps was almost ob¬ 
literated. It took Patrasche long to dis¬ 
cover any scent. When at last he found 
it, it was lost again quickly, and lost 
and recovered, and again lost and again 


112 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


recovered, a hundred times or more. 

The night was very wild. The lamps 
under the wayside crosses were blown out; 
the roads were sheets of ice; the impene¬ 
trable darkness hid every trace of habita¬ 
tions; there was no living thing abroad. 
All the cattle were housed, and in all the 
huts and homesteads men and women re¬ 
joiced and feasted. There was only Pa- 
trasche out in the cruel cold—old and fam¬ 
ished and full of pain, but with the 
strength and the patience of a great love 
to sustain him in his search. 

The trail of Nello’s steps, faint and ob¬ 
scure as it was under the new snow, went 
straightly along the accustomed tracks in¬ 
to Antwerp. It was past midnight when 
Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of 
the town and into the narrow, tortuous, 
gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in the 
town, save where some light gleamed rud- 
dily through the crevices of house shut- 


% 



Patrasche traced the steps he loved 










114 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


ters, or some group went homeward with 
lanterns, chanting drinking songs. The 
streets were all white with ice: the high 
walls and roofs loomed black against them. 
There was scarce a sound save the riot 
of the winds down the passages, as they 
tossed the creaking signs and shook the 
tall lamp-irons. 

So many passers-by had trodden 
through and through the snow, so many 
diverse paths had crossed and recrossed 
each other, that the dog had a hard task 
to retain any hold on the track he fol¬ 
lowed. But he kept on his way, though 
the cold pierced him to the bone, and the 
jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in 
his body gnawed like a rat’s teeth. He 
kept on his way, a poor, gaunt, shivering 
thing, and by long patience traced the 
steps he loved into the very heart of the 
burgh and up to the steps of the great 
cathedral. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


115 


“He is gone to the things that he loved/' 
thought Patrasche: he could not under¬ 
stand, but he was full of sorrow and of 
pity for the art passion that to him was 
so incomprehensible and yet so sacred. 

The portals of the cathedral were un¬ 
closed after the midnight mass. Some 
heedlessness in the custodians, too eager 
to go home and feast or sleep, or too 
drowsy to know whether they turned the 
keys aright, had left one of the doors un¬ 
locked. By that accident the footfalls 
Patrasche sought had passed through into 
the building, leaving the white marks of 
snow upon the dark stone floor. By that 
slender white thread, frozen as it fell, he 
was guided through the intense silence, 
through the immensity of the vaulted 
space—guided straight to the gates of the 
chancel, and there, stretched upon the 
stones, he found Nello. He crept up and 
touched the face of the boy. “Didst thou 


116 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


dream that I should be faithless and for¬ 
sake thee? I—a dog?” said that mute 
caress. 

The lad raised himself with a low cry 
and clasped him close. “Let us lie down 
and die together,” he murmured. “Men 
have no need of us, and we are all alone.” 

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, 
and laid his head upon the young boy’s 
breast. The great tears stood in his brown, 
sad eyes—not for himself; for himself he 
was happy. 

They lay close together in the piercing 
cold. The blasts that blew over the Flem¬ 
ish dikes from the northern seas were like 
waves of ice, which froze every living 
thing they touched. The interior of the 
immense vault of stone in which they were 
was even more bitterly chill than the 
snow-covered plains without. Now and 
then a bat moved in the shadows—now 
and then a gleam of light came on the 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 117 

ranks of carven figures. Under the Rubens 
they lay together quite still, and soothed 
almost into a dreaming slumber by the 
numbing narcotic of the cold. Together 
they dreamed of the old glad days when 
they had chased each other through the 
flowering grasses of the summer meadows, 
or sat hidden in the tall bulrushes by the 
water’s side, watching the boats go sea¬ 
ward in the sun. 

Suddenly through the darkness a great 
white radiance streamed through the vast¬ 
ness of the aisles; the moon, that was at 
her height, had broken through the clouds, 
the snow had ceased to fall, the light re¬ 
flected from the snow without was clear 
as the light of dawn. It fell through the 
arches full upon the two pictures above, 
from which the boy on his entrance had 
flung back the veil: the Elevation and the 
Descent from the Cross were for one in¬ 
stant visible. 


118 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Nello rose to his feet and stretched his 
arms to them: the tears of a passionate 
ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his 
face. “I have seen them at last!” he cried 
aloud. “0 God, it is enough!” 

His limbs failed under him and he sank 
upon his knees, still gazing upward at the 
majesty that he adored. For a few brief 
moments the light illumined the divine 
visions that had been denied to him so 
long—light clear and sweet and strong as 
though it streamed from the throne of 
heaven. Then suddenly it passed away: 
once more a great darkness covered the 
face of the Christ. 

The arms of the boy drew close again 
the body of the dog. “We shall see His 
face— there,” he murmured; “and He will 
not part us, I think.” 


XIV 


On the morrow, by the chancel of the 
cathedral, the people of Antwerp found 
them both. They were both dead: the 
cold of the night had frozen into stillness 
alike the young life and the old. When 
the Christmas morning broke and the 
priests came to the temple, they saw them 
lying thus on the stones together. Above, 
the veils were drawn back from the great 
visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of 
the sunrise touched the thorn-crowned 
head of the Christ. 

As the day grew on there came an old, 
hard-featured man who wept as women 
weep. “I was cruel to the lad,” he mut¬ 
tered, “and now I would. have made 
amends—yea, to the half of my sub¬ 
stance—and he should have been to me 
as a son.” 


119 


120 A DOG OF FLANDERS 

There came also, as the day grew apace, 
a painter who had fame in the world, and 
who was liberal of hand and of spirit. “I 
seek one who should have had the prize 
yesterday had worth won,” he said to the 
people; “a boy of rare promise and genius. 
An old woodcutter on a fallen tree at even¬ 
tide—that was all his theme. But there 
was greatness for the future in it. I would 
fain find him, and take him with me and 
teach him art.” 

And a little girl with curling fair hair, 
sobbing bitterly as she clung to her fa¬ 
ther’s arm, cried aloud, “0 Nello, come! 
We have all ready for thee. The Christ 
child’s hands are full of gifts, and the old 
piper will play for us; and the mother 
says thou shalt stay by the hearth and 
burn nuts with us all the Noel week long 
—yes, even to the Feast of the Kings! 
And Patrasche will be so happy! 0 
Nello, wake and come!” 




9 



Sobbing bitterly, she clung to her father’s arm 












































122 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


But the young pale face, turned up¬ 
ward to the light of the great Rubens with 
a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, 
“It is too late.” 

For the sweet, sonorous bells went ring¬ 
ing through the frost, and the sunlight 
shone upon the plains of snow, and the 
populace trooped gay and glad through 
the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no 
more asked charity at their hands. All 
they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden. 

Death had been more pitiful to them 
than longer life would have been. It had 
taken the one in the loyalty of love, and 
the other in the innocence of faith, from a 
world which for love has no recompense 
and for faith no fulfillment. 

All their lives they had been together, 
and in their deaths they were not divided; 
for when they wfere found the arms of the 
boy were folded too closely around the 
dog to be severed without violence, and 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 123 

the people of their little village, contrite 
and ashamed, implored a special grace for 
them, and, making them one grave, laid 
them to rest there side by side—forever! 





A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 


As you will see by the title page, the real name of 
the author of this little classic is Louise de la Ramee, 
but she is better known, perhaps, by the pen name she 
used of “Ouida,” which was the way she pronounced her 
own given name in infancy. She was born in England 
on New Year’s Day, at Bury Saint Edmunds, in 1839. 
Her father was French and he spent much time away 
from home because of his connection with the political 
upheavals of that period in his own country. From the 
last trip he did not return and it was supposed that he 
had been the victim of political intrigue. So little Ouida 
was brought up by her mother and the ties of love and 
devotion between them were closer for their bereavement. 

The little girl early showed her rare gifts. She was 
studious while other children of her age romped and 
played. Her talents bore early fruit also, for she wrote 
a history of England while yet in her teens! She wrote 
many other books of wide variety in style and scope, 
novels and short stories, sketches and essays and tracts. 
Her literary taste ranged over a vast diversity of subject 
matter, and her writings showed a play of imaginative 
fancy and freedom from restraint that has laid some of 
them open to criticism. Not all of her work is up to 
the standard she achieved in such short stories as this 
appealing tale of the love of a dog for his little master. 
Yet we have here an example of high attainment under 
the inspiration of a great theme. 

The intense pathos and pure ideals of this sweet and 

125 


126 A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 


tender story have moved the hearts of children every¬ 
where, dealing as it does with a sentiment so dear to 
childhood. The beauty of style is felt rather than appre¬ 
ciated, as the interest of the story is so absorbing in the 
first reading. In this simple but immortal story, the 
power of the author is revealed at its greatest, as she 
unfolds with rare artistry and realistic sequence the 
happenings in the lives of the dog and his two masters, 
the one old and broken, the other in the freshness of 
childhood’s bloom. The devotion of the noble dog and 
his faithful labor for his all but helpless owners cannot 
fail to arouse in the reader the sympathy which was 
withheld from the little group by their more prosperous 
neighbors in the story. 

The writings of Ouida are noted for the sympathy she 
expresses for the weak and suffering, human and animal. 
She pleaded always with the spoken and the written word 
for kindness to animals and taught that true greatness 
lies in mercy and gentleness to all living creatures. 

In the days of her fame she enjoyed for a time great 
prosperity and made her home in Italy. It is sad to 
record, however, that in her later years she was poor 
and often in want. She passed away at Viareggio, Jan¬ 
uary 25, 1908. 


NOTES 


KEY TO PRONUNCIATION 


ft as in day e as in herb 


6 as in more 
6 as in lop 
6 as in obey 
u as in use 
u as in rude 
u as in tub 


oo as in room 
ou as in pout 


ft as in fare e as in lend 

ft as in pan ft as in bemoan 


n as in ing, or 


ft as in tar i as in fire 

ft as in dance i as in pin 


the French n 
z as in azure 


e as in he 6 as in robe 


aftermath, after mftth, a second crop of grass cut from the same soil in 
the same season. 

Agni Dei, ag ni de i (English) or ag ne da e (Roman) plural of Agnus 
Deus, meaning “Lamb of God.” The stamped figure of a lamb sup¬ 
porting the banner of the cross placed on little cakes. 

Alois, al wah, girl’s name. 

alpha and omega, ftl fa and 6 me'ga; first and last letters of the Greek 
alphabet. 

Alvan, ftl'v&n, dominion; the time of the Spanish Duke of Alva, who was 
governor of Belgium and Holland in the sixteenth century. 

Antwerp, ftnt'werp, Flemish city noted as the residence of Peter Paul 
Rubens, great Flemish artist. 

Ardennois, ar dftn wa', a native of the Ardennes (ar dftn') a plateau in 
northern France. 

Assumption, fts stimp'shtin, the taking of a person up into heaven; festival 
of the Assumption; a painting by Rubens of the ascent of the Virgin 
Mary. 

Baas, bas, our American word “boss” is the nearest equivalent for this 
Flemish word. 

Baas Cogez, bas ko'kftz. 

bilberry, bll bftr I, European huckleberry. 

blazonry, bla'zon rl, artistic display. 

Brabant, bra ban, a province of Belgium. 

Brabantois, bra ban twa', a native of Brabant. 

Calvary, a religious emblem, representing the crucifixion. 

centime, san tern', a French coin equal to one hundredth of a franc. 

charette, chftr'ftt, little cart. 

colza, kol'za, a vegetable resembling cabbage. 

dais, da'Is, a platform at the end of a hall. . 

Descent from the Cross, painting by Rubens, his greatest, in the cathedral 

Dinant^dftnln^ a town in Belgium on the river Meuse, the birthplace of 
“the great artist of the Patroclus,” Antoine Joseph Wiertz (ftn twan 
zho zef verts) 1806-1865. The picture portrays the combat over the 
body of Patroclus, a friend of Achilles, as related in the Iliad. 
Elevation of the Cross, painting by Rubens in the cathedral at Antwerp 
Flanders, flftn'derz, a district formerly of Europe, now in the Netherlands- 
Belgium and France. The city of Antwerp is located m Flanders* 


127 


128 


NOTES 


franc, fr&nk, a silver coin of France, Belgium and Switzerland worth a 
little over nineteen cents. 

immortelle, !m 6r tel', everlasting; a plant whose flowers can be dried 
without loss of color or form. 

Jehan Daas, y6 han'das. 

Jordaens, yor'dans, a Flemish artist of the fifteenth century. 

kermis, ker'mSs, a local, outdoor festival or fair, held annually in the Low 
Countries. 

Kiesslinger, kes'ling er. 

Kyrie Eleison, klr'I e e H"s6n, Lord, have mercy! 

League, leg, a distance of about four miles. 

Louvain, loo van', an old city in Brabant, once famous for its churches, 
public buildings and university, but now practically in ruins, since 
its capture and pillage by the German army in 1914. 

Low Countries, Belgium and Holland. 

Madonna, ma ddn'a, a picture of the Virgin Mary. 

Mechlin, m6k'lln, a city in the province of Antwerp between the cities of 
Antwerp and Louvain. 

Meuse, muz, a river flowing from France through Belgium and Holland 
into the North Sea. 

Michel, me sh6l', the French form of the name of Michael. 

Mieris, me'rls, a Dutch painter. 

name-day, the day of the saint after whom a person is named, or a patron 
saint, is often celebrated instead of the birthday. 

Noel, no 61', French word for Christmas. 

Nello, n6l 16', a pet name for Nicolas. 

Patrasche, pa tr&sh', name of the large Flemish dog. 

Patroclus, p& tro'klfis, a friend of Achilles in the Iliad, subject of a painting 
by Wiertz, Belgian artist. 

posset, p6s'6t, a drink of hot milk mixed with ale or wine. 

quay, ke, wharf. 

Quentyn Matsys, kw6n'tln mat sis', a Flemish artist of the early six¬ 
teenth century. 

rood, rood, one fourth of an acre. 

Rubens, roo'benz, Peter Paul, great Flemish artist of the early part of 
the seventeenth century. He lived in Antwerp. 

Saint Jaques, san zhak', church of Antwerp in which is the tomb of 
Rubens. 

saint’s day, see name-day. 

Salve Regina, sal'wa ra ge'na, Hail Queen! Anthem of praise used in 
church service. 

squares of turf, peat, a fuel dug from bogs. 

Stavelot, sta v6 16, a town in Belgium twenty-four miles east of Liege, 
le 6gh'.. 

Van Eyck, van Ik', Flemish artist of the fifteenth century. 

Van Tal, van tol', artist. 

wattle roof, wdt'l, a thatched roof, the wattles being twigs laid on to sup¬ 
port the thatch. 

wharfinger, hwor'fin j6r, keeper of a wharf. 


























































































































































































































































